


Prompt Fills (St. Elsewhere)

by AnnetheCatDetective



Category: St. Elsewhere
Genre: M/M, POV Outsider, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-10 02:53:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17417657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnetheCatDetective/pseuds/AnnetheCatDetective
Summary: From prompts on DW and... well, elsewhere. But mostly the DW prompt comms.





	1. Private Lives

    It’s not that Mark Craig is a man given to gossip-- though it rankles to be the last to hear about everything-- or that he cares about the private lives of anyone at St. Eligius. He very much does not, their private lives ought to stay that way, dammit, the last thing he wants to deal with is… horny residents playing slap and tickle with the nurses, or whatever goes on around the place. He doesn’t need to know what people get up to.

 

    What he would _appreciate_ , what he would really like, would just be for Ehrlich not to treat him like some kind of oblivious old fool, though, because the evidence had been mounting a long time before today.

 

    He’s seen the way Ehrlich look at Morrison, like a lost puppy sometimes, for crying out loud. Which is no way for an intelligent medical professional to look, mooning like that, tripping over himself, but at least a person can stomach seeing him that way. It’s offensive in its foolishness, but so is everything else about the man. When he’s not mooning, he’s leering, and that’s its own kind of stupid. Out in the hallways where anyone could see him! Where everyone has to see him, even if not everyone knows what they’re looking at. Ehrlich leaning into the man’s personal space, that goofy look on his face. At _work_ , it’s an outrage, goodness knows Morrison doesn’t need the distraction.

 

    He’s seen them all over the place. Ehrlich practically pinning a blushing Morrison to the wall outside of on call, Morrison hanging around outside the OR for Ehrlich to come out, Ehrlich cooing over little Pete down in pediatrics and calming him down faster than any of the nurses who took turns looking after him-- which he wouldn’t have complained about, except Ehrlich was supposed to be down there checking in on actual patients and he never came back. Seen the two of them leaning against the third floor nurse’s station and both toying with the same stethoscope. _Morons_.

 

    And all that he could forgive, because he is-- if he says so himself-- a highly magnanimous man, prone to things like forgiveness and being the bigger person. If it was just the two of them failing at any sort of subtlety all throughout the halls of St. Eligius, he wouldn’t mind it. No more than he minds anyone else’s carrying on. Less than he minds most, because at least Ehrlich is _attempting_ some discretion!

 

    What gets him is the _lying_. When he opens a door to find two men _canoodling_ in a stairwell, for pity’s sake, and they leap apart with that nervous laugh of Ehrlich’s and the assertion that it isn’t what it looks like, as if anyone has ever said that and not been lying, and the real nail in the coffin of any trace of respect he might have had for them, Morrison’s saying he was only congratulating Ehrlich on the darned television gig. Well it was only going to make him look foolish, but if Ehrlich didn’t want his advice, he’s a grown man.

 

    It’s just _galling_ , that’s all. Morrison wincing over his faux pas with the reminder of that blasted news program, and Ehrlich as pink as a petunia and _giggling_ in fear, and the two of them looking at him like he’s some kind of _heterosexual_. Like they expect to be able to pass this lie off in front of him, and worse, that they think he’d punish them if he knew. Well he does know! And he’s not about to punish them, although sometimes when Ehrlich is at his most obnoxious, he’d like to! But not for this…

 

    Well… back when he was a resident, he wouldn’t have opened up to his own mentor on the subject of bisexuality if his very life was on the line, but this is Victor Ehrlich… he’s always trying to open up about his personal life, he ought to know… he ought to know he can trust Mark with _some_ things, so long as he understands they are in no way going to discuss this. He is not available for boyfriend advice, darn it, but he’s not unfeeling! He doesn’t need to hear it, but he needs the basic respect, he needs Ehrlich to know he’s not an _ogre_ , he needs him to know better than to _lie_ to him, that’s just disappointing…

 

    And it just stands to reason, it just figures… the one time he knows something nobody else has figured out, and he absolutely can’t talk about it, not to anyone. Typical!


	2. Maybe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Because GMTN/ITLIF aren't going to have anything meaningful with Clancy whatsoever, I used the 'second chances' prompt on fandomweekly to explore Jack's feelings through the awkward first-date-after-losing-Nina.

She’s… nice.

 

She’s nice, and she’s interested, and she’s smart. She’s outgoing. She cares about things. She isn’t put off by the fact he comes with a kid. She’s the kind of girl he thinks he could imagine Nina approving of, when he imagines she would tell him to move on. He does, sometimes, and he always imagines himself telling her he’s not interested in somebody new, but he never imagines she would want him to be alone. She’d want him to find someone, she’d want Pete to have a mom… he knows that. She’d want things for him that he can’t want for himself. And Clancy reminds him of her-- fun and friendly, caring and committed. A woman with her own passions and plans, who might be willing to saddle herself to him anyway, if everything went well between them.

 

It isn’t, at the moment, but that’s not her fault.

 

Maybe it’s too soon. He’s been married close to six years and alone close to six months, maybe he’s not ready. 

 

It’s not that he doesn’t like her, he does. He can see things about her he admires. Things he respects. Talking to her just a short while he sees things in her that he thinks another Jack would love. One who had a little more time, or one who lived just a slightly different life. In all the ways the world could have unfolded, there are ways this could have gone that would have left him achingly in love with her, he believes that. And she’s lovely, he sees that, he’s a red-blooded man, he’s not… he’s not blind to it, but...

 

But this? Isn’t working. Whether it’s nerves or timing or just the persistent nagging thought at the back of his head of a pair of blue eyes that aren’t hers and won’t ever be his. 

 

Maybe the answer is to give the date another try another time. Maybe the answer is that he ought to be with someone else, someone who isn’t like Nina, who doesn’t make him think of her, someone she wouldn’t have hand-picked for him as her replacement, when he tries to imagine what she’d say.

 

He’d called her not just because he’d felt lonely, but because she was everything Nina would pick for him… she’s just about everything Nina was-- her own person, but… with all those qualities. All the things Nina was, the things she’d look at and say Jack needed. If he’d needed her, why wouldn’t he?

 

There are things he thinks he needs now, not because he’s forgotten how to be without them, the way he’s forgotten how to be without Nina. Things he needs because they’re not like her. Someone who needs him to be those things. He loves people, but he’s not good at it, outside of his patients he never knows what to do with people, and he let himself coast and not get better. Maybe he needs someone who’d push him to do for himself. To be all the things he hasn’t been, and she didn’t need him to be. But maybe what he needs isn’t a woman who will fill all the gaps Nina left. Maybe what he needs is somebody he’ll navigate new balances with. Maybe he needs to fill his own gaps and maybe he needs to discover what someone else has to offer that isn’t just what he’s known. 

 

Maybe what he’s thought about lately… hasn’t been another woman. And maybe that’s foolish. Maybe there are things he can’t have and maybe he’s getting ahead of himself saying this won’t work, but… there were things he knew about himself that he never really explored. Got married right out of college, never experimented-- not with… not with some things. And it’s not that he wants to  experiment , he wants to settle down, and he knows what his options are and what they aren’t, if he wants to be married, if he wants to be able to balance marriage and career and to give Pete the home life he wants for him, to not worry and look over his shoulder, but…

 

But he thinks about someone sometimes, and he’s not sure Clancy’s the blond he’d picture, in his heart of hearts. When he thinks about a cool hand grasping his and that pair of wide blue eyes, when he imagines tracing the bow of someone’s lips and he knows who he’s thinking about isn’t someone he’s got a shot at a future with, but he can’t help thinking maybe...

 

Maybe the important thing is that he’s done this for himself and now he knows he can try.


	3. Support System

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first in a series of fic(let)s that diverge from what I'm doing with GMTN/ITLIF, but presuming that they get together at roughly the same point in time. Although they're going to string together, each one stands alone, as per the 100prompts comm requirements. 
> 
> Mid-s3, though no specific spoilers beyond the mention of Health Spot and the fact that Jack is having a crisis (and when is he not?)- Jack is having a rough night and not a lot of faith in himself, Victor is there.
> 
> (prompt: I'm here)

    Victor finds him in an empty waiting room on the sixth floor. He’s moved the playpen up here, Pete’s sound asleep, and Jack…

 

    “Why didn’t you go home? You’re not on call.”

 

    “Didn’t feel like home, I guess. I’ll have plenty of time at home, I-- I just want to be here right now.” Jack shrugs.

 

    No one’s going to find them here. Not now, when there are no visitors. When the only patients coming in are down in the ER and all the families have gone home and everyone who’s been admitted is in bed. When the wastebaskets are empty, so it means it’s already been cleaned. He checks, before he steps forward and wraps his arms around Jack’s waist from behind. Leans against his shoulder with a heavy sigh.

 

    “Okay.”

 

    “Okay?”

 

    “Yeah. Okay. This is where you want to be.”

 

    “You should go--”

 

    “No. No, if you’re here, I’m here. Jack… I’m here. I mean-- for you. For… whatever happens.”

 

    “How was your night?”

 

    “Wiped out.” He kisses the back of Jack’s neck. “Wished you were with me. And then I was kind of glad you weren’t, because I made a fool out of myself in front of Craig again…”

 

    Jack leans back into him, resting his arms over Victor’s. “Not one to judge. I wished you were with me, too. But that’s me being selfish.”

 

    “You can be selfish with me.” Victor nuzzles against him a little more. “I like it. Don’t you like me being selfish with you?”

 

    “Mm, I wish I was in the mood.” He chuckles sadly. “I do, you know I do… I like when you’re greedy with me. I like being grabbed… I like being _yours_ …”

 

    “I’ll grab you sometime when we’re in the mood. I mean, I guess I’m grabbing you now, it’s just different.” Victor hides a rueful smile against Jack’s shoulder. “I still like doing it.”

 

    “Wish it didn’t have to be. I don’t think anyone’d see us… and then I think, if they did, how much worse could it get than this, anyway? I mean-- just if you kissed me. We never get even that much.”

 

    Victor kisses his shoulder. “I love you, Jack Morrison. No one’s here. No one’s going to be here. I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t think it was safe, I promise.”

 

    “Just for a minute. I know. And I love you.” Jack nods. The view is something from the sixth floor, at night. All the little lights, and the moon. A familiar little slice of the city, even if he doesn’t much look at it from this particular window. If someone came this way, if someone came in, if someone saw them… he thinks they’d both be quickly and easily recognized. His own job is in doubt, but Victor’s isn’t… he wouldn’t let Victor risk it if he didn’t think this place would be a dead zone.

 

    He’s not sure what he’ll do, if he loses this. He can’t afford to start his life over. He can’t leave Victor. He doesn’t want any other job in the world, but… he’ll have to figure something out. It’s all so exhausting, he doesn’t know what he’s doing with himself half the time, but…

 

    But Victor is there, coping with all the same worries. He shifts, keeps one arm wrapped around Jack’s waist and slides the other hand up to spread over his chest.

 

    “Jack…” He sighs, swaying. Getting Jack into the same rhythm with him. “Whatever happens, I-- I’ll be here. I will, I want you to know that.”

 

    “You can’t support all three of us.”

 

    “It’ll be tight, but… at least until things get straightened out, at least until you’re back at work. I’m not saying it’ll be easy, but… what other choice do we have?”

 

    “You have a choice.” Jack reaches back, his hand finding Victor’s cheek.

 

    “I don’t follow.”

 

    “I’m saying you don’t have to be with me, you don’t have to take care of us--”

 

    “Jack--”

 

    “Let me finish. You don’t _have_ to. The fact that you don’t see walking out as an option is… it means something to me. You’re not stuck with me… except that you want to be.”

 

    “If we had to… we have savings.” Victor kisses the back of his neck. “Not as much as I’d like, not… And I don’t feel good about breaking into it, that was for a house someday, Pete’s college… long term stuff. But if we have to, then it’s there.”

 

    “We.” Jack sighs, pulling away. “Victor, _you_ have savings.”

 

    Victor’s heart is a stone, and his body is sixty-five percent water, and the stone that is his heart plummets right through all of it to the floor at that, until Jack turns around and pulls him into a hard hug.

 

    “You’re so good to me.” He buries his face against Victor’s neck, and Victor can breathe again. “You’re so good to _us_.”

 

    He’s not sure about that. He’s not any more good than he thinks someone ought to be to the person they’re committed to, and it’s not like they’ve discussed what level of commitment they’re _on_ , but they don’t exactly have a lot of options, in terms of legal entanglement. Despite his own experience with the institution of marriage, if he could marry Jack, he would. But the whole reason he’d started setting aside savings separate from his regular expenses and his student loan payments was so that he and Jack could have a life together. Once they owned a house together, it wouldn’t matter if they couldn’t get married, they would have that to point to and say ‘okay, we’re in it’. A house with a yard, with a fence, with space for Pete to grow up… but they could put that on hold if they had to. He could use the Health Spot money for regular expenses.

 

    “We could move in together. One apartment instead of two. Rent and utilities is cut in half, that’s something.” He says. It’ll help if Jack is without work for a while, and it’ll help even if he’s not, help with saving for a real place of their own.

 

    “How would we explain you moving into my apartment?”

 

    “Well, it would make more sense for you to move in with me-- I mean, if the worst happens, and you had to be worried about your future, why not say you’re staying with a friend for a little while?”

 

    Jack sighs. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess that’s less suspicious. I just… our home, it’s…”

 

    “Yeah. I know. Look, I don’t like it, and I’d love to give up my place and just move in with you, honest, but-- If we didn’t have to worry what people would think, I-- It’s not forever, if you do. It’s until we can get a house, a house you _like_. And if there’s no emergency, then there’s no need. But if you need to, if you’re worried… then you can come and let me take care of you. We’ll cover the outlets and put up the baby gates, I don’t keep any clutter, nothing breakable out in the open, nothing he can choke on lying out, so-- just-- It’s an option.”

 

    “It’s not forever.” Jack nods slowly, coming out of the crook of Victor’s neck. “Yeah. It’s there if we have to. Okay. I just feel…”

 

    “I know.” He cups Jack’s face in one hand, keeping his other arm tight around him. “Jack, I know… I mean, and I feel-- you know? But… I just--”

 

    He’s bad at the words. Not about saying how he feels, but when it comes to saying the right things about how to handle emotional situations… Jack usually understands he means well, at least, but he doesn’t want to say the wrong thing, when moving in together is a pretty weighty thing if it means Jack having to give up his place, when it’s the only home Pete’s ever had, when Jack has so many more warm memories of his apartment than Victor does at his place. It feels heartless to have to make the decision based on what looks acceptable to the outside world, instead of who has an emotional attachment to where he lives, but they don’t have the freedom.

 

    The best thing he can do is just to stick around, he guesses. Not just sticking around in terms of not cutting and running when things get hard, but… to find as much time as possible to be _near_ him, even when he can’t say anything or do anything. The best thing he can do right now, in an empty room in a quiet wing, in the one moment they have when no one who might need them would ever come looking for them here, is to kiss him. Slow, and gentle, and with all the feeling he can put into a kiss when he’s not trying to start something.

 

    It’s hard not to want to try to start something, when Jack sighs and melts into it, in a way that usually suggests that Victor could do _anything_ to him, but this time he doesn’t think that’s what Jack means, or what he needs. He just needs… He needs to feel taken care of, supported, believed in. Even if they were home with the doors locked and the kid put to bed, the mood wouldn’t be sexy. Though if they were home with the doors locked and the kid put to bed, he’d probably lay Jack down and kiss him a few more times for good measure, just to get his point across. That he _is_ here to take care of and support and believe in him.

 

    “Get some sleep.” He whispers, his lips still brushing Jack’s. “If you don’t want to go home, in on call, on a couch in one of the lounges, but… get some sleep tonight.”

 

    “Yeah. Yeah, okay. You?”

 

    “If I’m lucky I’ll join you. You want me to carry Pete’s pen down to on call with you? Maybe all three of us can get some shut-eye.”

 

    “I shouldn’t take up a bed there when I’m not--”

 

    “Switch shifts with someone, then, if you can’t go home tonight. And don’t say you can’t, look, I’ll cover for you and you’ll get some rest, you _need_ it, Jack. If there aren’t overlapping emergencies, I can cover you. And you can sleep.”

 

    “You’re sweet, but… I can’t. I’ll go home… I’ll be okay.”

 

    “Okay. I’ll get the pen stashed for you, you go. I’ll see you in the morning.”

 

    “Yeah.” Jack dares a quick kiss to Victor’s cheek before leaving his arms to pick Pete up. “Morning.”

 

     Victor checks his watch and decides against returning that one-- they can’t cut it too close to scheduled rounds on the ward, at some point the night shift will kick into gear and the waiting room will be empty but they won’t have _privacy_ there. He kisses the top of Pete’s head instead, as Jack gets him settled against his shoulder. He and Jack share a smile.

 

    “It’s going to be okay. We’re going to be okay.” He nods, and he grabs the door for Jack, before doubling back to get the playpen folded, while Jack leans against the door to hold it for him.

 

    It’s got to be, really.


	4. Smooth Operator

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt 'Gloves'

    The problem Jack had not considered, when he was put on anaesthesia rotation, was that he might be in the OR with Victor, and that it might be just a little bit distracting.

 

    Okay, very distracting.

 

    He really doesn’t want this to be one more thing he’s bad at, one more reason why they might not want him back next year, when there are already so many, he doesn’t want to be distracted. He’s shadowing Vijay, rather than doing it all himself, but that doesn’t mean he can let his attention wander.

 

    For the most part, he’s not crazy about this rotation-- for the most part, he doesn’t like being in the OR, though he’s sucked it up before, he’s observed. It just… it gives him the willies. Seeing someone _open_ like that, knowing all the things that could go wrong. He’s never so much as had his tonsils removed and he’s not interested in changing that any time soon. It’s pretty easy, generally, to keep his eyes on the readout and not on the patient.

 

    It’s not easy to keep his eyes off of Victor, as the scrub nurse pulls the gloves onto his hands, partway up the forearm. He has nice forearms, but he has perfect hands. Strong, careful hands… the kind of hands you would want your surgeon to have, if you absolutely had to have surgery. And Jack still hopes he never will, but...

 

    If Jack was going to have surgery, a part of him would want it to be Victor, would want to place that trust in him and no one else. But that would be… an incredible burden to put on him, to ask for him. He’d feel safer with Victor than with anybody else, but Victor would be in the position of having to perform surgery on him, wouldn’t be able to explain why he couldn’t, would be compromised, wouldn’t be his best.

 

    Their eyes meet. Jack wonders if it’s obvious to Victor, that he wishes he was in the scrub nurse’s place, that he would rather be pulling those gloves on himself.

 

    It’s not a fetish for playing doctor-- definitely not that, and he can imagine Victor’s own disgust at the idea-- but the thing about the gloves is…

 

    Well, okay, the surgical gloves aren’t quite like exam gloves, which is a lot more like what they have a box of in the nightstand, which is what Victor wears when he works Jack open, and it’s for the best these are different, thicker, they don’t make the same snap sound, they’re a lot longer, Jack’s mind can’t go all the way down to the gutter, but… he’s halfway in the gutter, thinking about being the one to roll those gloves onto those beautiful hands. _Big_ hands. With those long, clever fingers.

 

    He wants him so badly it hurts, sometimes-- not sexually, although… well, that too, sometimes. But just to be able to speak to him and look at him and touch his hand, the way that he wants to. The way he would if one of them was a woman. He wants, more than anything, to follow Victor back out of the OR, and strip him out of the gloves, the gown, the cap and mask. Ruffle his hair out of where it lay sweat-matted against his head and tell him, with every ounce of admiration and love that he feels, how good he’d been.

 

    He wants to be able to be open. He wants to be able to hold Victor’s hand.

 

    He kind of wants to be the one to lean in and wipe the sweat away from his forehead when he says ‘mop’, but he really doesn’t want to be in a position where he’s watching the surgery happen. Once the initial incision is made, there’s absolutely no temptation to look up from the readout. He doesn’t want to see any of the action. He just wants…

 

    He just wants the reasonable excuse to be close, to touch. That’s all.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wayne figures he'll just swing by. That's what a good friend does, when a friend says he's just going to be spending a depressing sounding evening home alone. He has no idea to make of what he finds.

 

    Wayne lets himself in. He figures he might as well, Victor had said he was in for a lonely night at home, when they’d talked at lunch, and Wayne’s plans for the evening fell through. He figures Victor might be just as grateful for the company-- he wouldn’t even mind if he dug out Trivial Pursuit, that’s how bored he’s feeling. But now, hey, they can be bored together!

 

    He never actually surrendered his spare key to Victor’s place-- or, well, he had, but then he’d found the one he thought he’d lost, and anyway, this is going to be a great surprise, they could both use the company.

 

    “Hey hey!” He greets. “Your ex-roomie here to save you from your boredom!”

 

    Victor isn’t in front of the TV, or in the kitchen. Which is kind of weird.

 

    From upstairs, there is a very loudly groaned bit of choice profanity. Which isn’t Victor.

 

    It sounds like it’s Jack.

 

    Which is more than just kind of weird, because Victor had said he was going to be alone, and Jack has a kid, he can’t drop everything to run over and surprise a friend, but it sounds like that’s exactly what he’s done, and it sounds like he’s thrown his back out or something, so it’s just as well he’s here, too, because it might take two of them to move him down the stairs and get him straightened out.

 

    The bedroom door is open, when he gets upstairs, and he sees them before he can say anything at all, and it’s…

 

    Incredibly weird.

 

    There’s a roll of saran wrap and a tube of Astroglide lying on the bed, and those seem like two pretty disparate things, neither of which he would imagine having a role in the loud, impassioned swearing to come out of Jack Morrison, except Jack is on his knees and elbows, _naked_ , and Victor is going to _town_ on his ass, and the saran wrap is a very necessary hygienic barrier between Victor’s tongue and things best left un-thought-about, and Victor is also naked, Wayne hadn’t seen Victor naked when they’d been living together, and now here he is, eating a guy out and apparently _enjoying_ it, dick just hanging out.

 

    Well, actually, not just hanging out. Like… very much also enjoying what he’s doing.

 

    With Jack’s ass.

 

    With his tongue.

 

    This is an incredibly weird thing to have a friend over to do, he doesn’t think he can possibly overuse the words ‘incredibly weird’ in reference to what Victor and Jack are doing. Jack had to have planned for this because he had to have gotten a babysitter… Did he arrange that after Victor said he had no plans-- which, even if he did, what a way to relieve the boredom, why this?

 

    Oh.

 

    Or this is something they _do_ together, this is something they do together, and Victor said ‘I’m just sitting around at home by myself’ because he couldn’t say ‘Yeah, I’m having a friend over so I can perform analingus on him, but it’s no big deal’. There’s a latex glove on the bed, too, half turned inside-out.

 

    “Victor, Victor, you’re _teasing_ me…” Jack groans, forehead dropped down against the pillow.

 

    Neither of them has noticed him and he should get the hell out of Dodge before one of them does, or he should knock and say ‘hey guys, what the hell is this?’, he should do anything that isn’t _watching_.

 

    Victor doesn’t reply to Jack, because Victor’s tongue is still very busy. He sure does _moan_ , though, without unburying himself from Jack’s ass. It’s, perhaps by the nature of what he’s trying to do with his mouth and how everything just is, the _filthiest_ moan Wayne has ever heard. It sounds very lascivious, and also just physically very wet and…

 

    “ _Please_ …” Jack says-- begs-- and Victor’s hand is digging into his thigh, and he’s, there’s just a lot of sweat going on. “Need you, need you in me…”

 

    Oh.

 

    Wow.

 

    No, he cannot stay and watch this.

 

    For one thing, he understands the principle and all, but how is Victor supposed to get _that_ comfortably inside _there_? A digital exam is bad enough, a rectal speculum is damn close to unbearable, this…

 

    Victor finally pulls his face out of Jack’s ass, and there’s a moment of cold fear, but he doesn’t see Wayne, he turns his head the other way to rest his cheek against the small of Jack’s back, and Wayne should really leave now while he has the chance, it’s just that everything about this is so incredibly weird that he can’t react right.

 

    “ _Fuck_ me…” Jack practically _whines_. “Victor, I’m ready, I’m so ready…”

 

    “Hang on, hang on… I want you on your back.” He turns just enough to kiss Jack, just about over his left kidney. “With your legs around my waist. I want to _look_ at you.”

 

    Wayne tears himself away, because the minute they reposition themselves, one of them is going to spot him in the doorway. And he really doesn’t want to see them going at it.

 

    Any more than he already has.

 

    He goes downstairs as quietly as possible, to have a nice quiet crisis on Victor’s sofa. They’ve both been married before, so what the hell is this? He can’t figure it out for the life of him.

 

    He can hear them-- Jack, mostly-- though there are lulls, too. And then, two heavy footfalls on the stairs, warm laughter.

 

    “Well, next time come to mine.” Jack is saying. “I have to go relieve the sitter…”

 

    “Baby, you know I can’t get enough of you…” Victor says, and that…

 

    Isn’t what you say to a buddy. Even one you maybe get off with for whatever reason.

 

    They get to the foot of the stairs-- Jack looks _wrecked_ , their clothes barely on-- and gape at him.

 

    Victor, wide-eyed, red-faced, points to the sofa where Wayne is sitting. “Were you… _there_ , when-- _it_ happened?”

 

    “Yeah.” Wayne lies.


End file.
